Recreation
by TinkerBoo1310
Summary: When someone from Natasha's past re-emerges at SHIELD, she is pushed over the edge. Clint will help her re-build herself.
1. Chapter 1 - Got Your Back

The nightmare woke her.

This was nothing unusual for Natasha Romanoff; She rarely slept deeply, and never for more than three hours at a time. But this time was different. She rubbed a hand over her tired face and blanched at the wetness on her cheeks.

Natasha didn't cry. The Black Widow did _not_ cry.

She slumped over and took two deep breaths before calling out to her partner who she could feel hovering outside the door.

"You can come in, Barton." She winced at the rasp in her voice.

The door opened slowly, and the Hawk's sheepish face poked into the room. He took in the dishevelled appearance of his partner and sighed, stepping into the bedroom and shutting the door softly.

"Hey," Clint whispered, sitting down on the edge of her bed. "Nightmares getting bad again huh?"

"Worse." Natasha croaked.

"Tasha. Have you been…crying?" He asked, stunned.

"I think so? I don't know. I don't…remember."

"If I ask you if you wanna talk about it, are you gonna threaten me in anyway?"

Instead of responding, Natasha simply let her head drop, too exhausted and wound up to form a witty answer.

"Tash…" Clint murmured in concern, reaching out to tuck a loose curl behind her ear.

"I'm going to go to the gym." Natasha said finally, pushing herself off the bed.

Clint scowled after her as she moved around the room finding clean clothes.

"You sure that's a good idea Nat? You look like shit."

She shot him a glare. "I just gotta get it out of my system, Barton. I'll be fine. It was just a dream."

He stood when she reached the door. "Fine. I'll be with Phil then."

She nodded and headed out, slipping past the compound's security cameras with ease.

Once she had disappeared down the hall, Clint sunk back onto the bed and cursed loudly. He was about to go behind his partner's back – something he had vowed never to do – because she was too stubborn to admit when something genuinely troubled her.

Groaning, he reached over to the SHIELD phone sitting on Natasha's bedside table. He dialled and waited, praying he wasn't waking their handler.

Coulson picked up before the second ring.

"Romanoff, what's the problem?" His voice was immediately worried. Clint sighed.

"Phil, it's me. Everything's fine," he began, before the older agent could go into full panic mode. "Phil… I need a favour."


	2. Chapter 2 - Sweat It Out

Natasha ignored the sweat plastering her hair to her forehead as she retrieved the knives she had thrown during the last simulation.

Sheathing them in various places on her body, she paced back to the table at the front of the room to select another training program. She had been in the gym for almost three hours now, but she still couldn't shake the feeling of the nightmare that had awoken her.

Next to her name, her time from the last simulation flashed in red - she had broken her previous record. Smirking, she opened the folder of Advanced Training Programs, designed specifically for Strike Team Delta by Coulson and the Director of Training Alistair, and entered her access code.

Her emerald eyes scanned the screen. Romanoff and Barton both had favourites that they would work at, constantly besting their own times, but every program was designed to be a challenge to the deadly duo.

Finally, Natasha's eyes lit on the Agility file. She opened it and browsed the various simulations. Barton's name was next to every one. He was undeniably superior to her due to his acrobatic past, but she had been improving and was starting to come close to his unprecedented times.

Natasha scrolled to the bottom of the page, looking at the most difficult scenarios. Finally she selected one.

Her jaw set in determination as the room whirred and adjusted around her, setting up the simulation. The lights dimmed to virtually nothing as Natasha took her place on the starting pad. She closed her eyes and worked to slow her breathing. This was easily the most challenging simulations for her, and it would take every ounce of concentration for her just to complete the course.

She opened her eyes when she heard the quite chime that signalled the course was ready.

The concept of the simulation was simple: Natasha had to use the gymnast bars and rings that had been lowered from the ceiling to weave her way through the "laser beams" criss-crossing her path. If she touched the red lights, she would trigger the hypothetical alarm and automatically fail the course.

There was also the small factor that the lasers moved, and the course was situated 12 feet off the ground. Piece of cake.

Before she could hesitate, Natasha hit the green button that would lift the starting platform to the height of the bars. She was careful to keep her weight steady; the timer would start the second both of her feet left the platform.

She jolted to a stop and took a moment to fully survey the course laid out in front of her, Clint's record flashing in her mind all along. She knew she had no chance of reaching that. In fact, she only had an 82% history of even getting to the end of this particular course.

But this morning, she was more determined.

Taking one final steadying breath, Natasha sprung from the platform, her body arching gracefully over the first set of beams. Her hands hit the first bar and she immediately pulled herself into handstand to counter the swinging motion of the bar.

She traced the movement of the next beam before lowering her body into an upside down pike to match it. She knew she had to time her next move perfectly to avoid the beam in front of her.

When the moment hit, she was a blur. Dropping from the pike to catch the bar with her legs. Natasha swung upside down for less than a second before launching herself through the gap in the lasers that she was waiting for, catching herself on the gymnasts rings in front of her.

Quickly, she lifted her legs into straddle so that her feet wouldn't trip the beams moving below. Her arms trembled slightly before she swung to the thick rope suspended before her.

She hauled herself up the rope, acutely aware of the beams that tracked up and down on either side.

From the top of the rope, she moved onto a beam, barely four inches wide. She was now almost 20 feet above the gym mats. At least the beams up here were stationary.

She wove through them with ease and stopped at the endof the beam, taking in her final obstacle. She knew from experience that this one _had_ to be perfect. If her timing was off by a millisecond, she would trip the laser beam. If her jump was off by half a centimetre, she would meet the mats – 20 feet below – with her face.

She took a breath, knowing she had it right this time. As she took one foot off the beam, she was suddenly distracted by the light that was flooding into the gym from the wide open door below.

Shit.

Natasha sensed rather than felt that her jump was off. She heard someone yell her recently adopted surname as she plummeted to the ground.

Twisting in mid-air, she reached out to catch the wire holding that held another set of gymnast rings. She cursed loudly in Russian as the wired sliced easily through her palm, and again when her closed fist met the top of the ring, abruptly halting her descent and pulling her shoulder considerably out of place.

Looking down, she gauged the distance to the floor as about 9 and a half feet. Groaning, she let go of the wires and dropped the rest of the way, rolling on impact to lessen the blow.

Coulson – who was apparently to blame for this embarrassing failure – rushed to her aid, but she sent him an infamous Black Widow glare and he immediately backed off. He cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Fury wants to see you in Briefing Room 3 as soon as you're…ready."

She nodded sharply and pulled herself to her feet, pretending not to notice Phil's concerned frown as he left the gym.

Angrily, Natasha stalked to the flashing red tablet. She slammed a palm down on the "Fail" screen, shutting off the program and leaving a bloody palm print on the device.

She stormed out of the gym, muttering under her breath in an assortment of languages about the inconvenience of rude Americans.


	3. Chapter 3 - Girl You Don't Wanna Cross

Clint was waiting outside the Briefing Room when Natasha arrived, freshly showered with a bandage wrapped around the gash on her palm.

There was no one else around, so he unabashedly let his eyes roam her body. He was probably the only man in the world who found combat boots and cargo pants sexy as hell, but then Natasha had a way of making any outfit look damn attractive.

He frowned at the bandage on her hand, and the frown became a grimace when his sharp gaze landed on her swollen reddened shoulder, exposed by the plain tank she was wearing.

"What the hell have you been doing?" He asked wearily.

"Training." Natasha replied curtly, avoiding his eyes. She had been unsuccessful in blocking out the nights events, and was more than embarrassed that Clint had witnessed it.

"Only you could come out of a spontaneous solo training session with injuries." Clint said incredulously as they turned to knock on the Briefing Room door.

"Oh, so we're just going to forget about that incident last week when you disappeared at 2am to shoot a bow for three hours straight and took four layers of skin off your forearm?" She responded in a low voice as the doors swung open. He glared at her as she continued at a normal volume, "Besides, it's not my fault Coulson interrupted me in the middle of a simulation."

From one side of the table, Coulson shot Natasha another apologetic look which she waved off, taking a seat opposite him. Clint just blinked at the two of them in confusion.

"What simulation gives you a dislocated shoulder from one interruption?" He asked incredulously, moving to join her at the table.

"Does it matter?" She answered exasperatedly, "God, Barton, I'm _fine_."

"16.04" Coulson said quietly, staring intently at the file in front of him on the desk.

Clint stared accusingly at Natasha, while she shot a similar glare to Coulson.

"Are you crazy Nat? _16.04_?"

"I'm perfectly capable of completing any of the simulations, _Barton_."

"When you're at your best, sure, but not—"

"Are you implying I'm not at my best?"

"No, Natasha! Not when you woke at three o'clock in the damn—"

"A- _hem_!" Three heads flicked around and stared at Nick Fury, who was standing in the doorway with one eyebrow cocked. "Am I interrupting something, Agents?" He asked smoothly.

"No, sir." Natasha replied, curtly, turning away from Clint, eyes boring into the wall opposite her. Clint continued to stare as she instantly tucked away her pride and anger behind a completely calm face before her superior.

Fury cleared his throat again as he came to stand at the head of the table, pulling Clint's gaze from his partner.

"Strike Team Delta," He began, "Bulgaria. Tonight. Recon and Intel collection only. I don't wat to see you back here for at least 9 days. Quinjet leaves," he glanced down at his watch, "15 minutes ago."

There is a pregnant pause as the team looks up at the director. Clint is the one to break it.

"That's it?" He asks, slightly incredulously.

"I apologise if you find this mission _beneath_ you, Agent Barton," Fury's voice was dripping with sarcasm, "But we need you in Bulgaria. Apparently I need to stress the urgency of the mission, so get moving. You're already late. Dismissed."

Clint snatched his mission package off Coulson, grumbling under his breath about "stupid rookie assignments" while Natasha simply rolled her eyes. She got to her feet and made to follow him out of the room, when Coulson caught her wrist by the door. She glanced at him expectantly.

"Natasha, I want to apologise again for this morning, but there _is_ something I wanted to talk to you about." She raised her eyebrows when he didn't immediately continue. He coughed awkwardly and began.

"I just wanted to make sure everything is ok. You have been doing so well, but Clint seems to have some concerns."

"Clint talked to you about me?" Natasha's voice was low and gave away very little. Coulson sighed.

"He's worried about you Natasha. He says you've been having nightmares, training all night, pushing yourself too hard. It's ok to need some help. You haven't had a session in psych for three years, we don't expect you to always be 'fine'".

Natasha smiled tightly. "Thank you, Coulson. But I _am_ fine. Now if you'll excuse me I need to get going." She stepped past him brusquely, ignoring his frown and the gaze that followed her out of the room.

She kept on walking straight past Clint who was waiting for her in the corridor.

"Hey!" He called, pushing himself off the wall and catching up to her in a few strides.

"You are _un_ believable, Clint Barton." She muttered, not even pausing to look at him. "Going behind my back to our _handler_? Are you _serious_? After all the times I've covered for you, all the shit you've gone through and I've kept my mouth shut because I've _got your goddamn back_."

"Tash come on." When she didn't stop, he grabbed her shoulder and spun her to face her. "Natasha. Seriously. You don't know how shit this made me feel, alright? Don't you understand how worried I was that I would even consider talking to Phil? Jesus Nat I don't have a fucking death wish, you _need_ help!"

In seconds Clint was pinned against a wall with Natasha's elbow pressed into his jugular. She stared at him for several seconds before making a noise of disgust and pushing away, stalking off down the hall.

Groaning, Clint began following after his partner again, not bothering to continue arguing his point (even if he _was_ totally justified in going to Coulson…). Matching stride perfectly, the team turned into the main walkway which was bustling with people. There was some kind of commotion at the end of the hall, and Clint craned his neck to try and get a look.

A group of agents was escorting someone into the main complex. Clearly whoever they were, it was a high risk movement – given the number of guards, agents, and large weapons they were holding. As the group came closer, Natasha and Clint stepped back out of the way and scrutinised the affair.

The detainee was tall but hunched over, feet practically dragging along the floor while agents on either side of him supported his weight. Clint couldn't make out any of his face past the long, greasy black hair that hung down on either side. Even from back here Clint could tell the guy was big. He was dressed in full heavy duty tactical clothes, boots that looked like they could stomp your face in, and he practically bulged. The muscles in his neck were taught, and his massive shoulders—hang on. Was that arm fucking metal?!

Clint turned to his partner in wonder to point out the bionic prisoner, but she was white as a sheet. Her eyes, glued to the group moving past them, were widened in confusion (and fear? No. The Black Widow wasn't afraid of anything) and she had one hand on the gun at her hip.

"Nat?" Clint asked, looking from his partner to subject of her gaze, "Do you know this guy or something?"

At that moment, the prisoner lifted his head, groaning in agony. He looked around wildly, but when his eyes landed on Natasha his whole body shook.

" _Natalia_!"

The cry seemed to rock the building and Natasha looked like someone had punched her square in the gut.

"Natalia!" The man screamed again, his voice thick and foreign, and begin trying to shake off the guards at his sides. "это я! Актив, что происходит?" He grunted and threw an agent to the ground.

Natasha was frozen, her mouth in a small circle, a tiny furrow in her brow, as Clint stared in confusion.

The prisoner became more agitated. On the side of his metal arm, he could not be contained, as it bent and twisted unnaturally, fighting off the half a dozen men who tried to get him under control. He started to fight his way towards them, still yelling out in Russian, his words punctuated by punches.

"Наталия!" He cried out once more, lunging toward Strike Team Delta. Clint was reaching for his bow when one of the other agents finally released three shots of tranquilisers into the prisoner's neck. He slowed, and dropped to one knee, still reaching out towards the shocked redhead.

"Наталия…" he murmured once more, before the extraction team caught him under the arms again and began dragging him off in their original direction, shooting sheepish apologetic looks to the two senior agents involved.

Crowds of people had gathered, watching the commotion, and Clint cleared his throat and started moving them along. When he returned to his partner, it looked like she had not moved a muscle – barely taken a breath – since the whole scenario had begun.

Clint reached out hesitantly, and grabbed Natasha by the shoulders. At his touch, it was like a cloud washed away from her. The shocked expression completely disappeared, her lips becoming a thin line, eyes flaming. Natasha straightened, and brushed Clint's hands away dismissively.

Without saying a word, she turned back the way they had come and began walking back to Fury's office. As Clint trailed behind her, confused and more than slightly panicked, he could track the way that an all-consuming rage began to work its way into Natasha's body.

He didn't know what had just happened, but he knew that in that moment he would have been glad to be perched on an icy roof in Bulgaria. And he certainly did not envy whatever wrath Director Fury was about to face.


	4. Chapter 4 - A History Story

Clint kept his distance as he followed Natasha back down the halls. He was deeply confused by the whole turn of events, and wanted to reach out and ask his partner what was going on, but the sheer energy exuding from her rigid back was enough for him to know to keep his mouth shut.

Natasha was once of those quiet-angry types. The really scary, silent, wickedly mad type. Rarely did she yell, or scream. She _seethed_ and it was terrifying.

She was seething now as she slammed the door open into the directors quarters. Startled, Maria Hill stood up from her desk where she was working.

"Agent? The director isn't expecting anyone right now. Romanoff!" Hill went to reach out for Natasha, but Clint caught her arm just in time and shook his head at her seriously. He knew Nat was out of line, but he _liked_ Hill. He didn't really want to see her face slammed into the floor.

Not even hesitating, Natasha pushed open the doors into Fury's office. Clint and Maria followed (somewhat sheepishly) as she walked right up to his desk.

" _What_ is he doing here?" She hissed, darkly.

To his credit, Fury didn't even look away from his computer monitor as he replied.

"I'm not sure what you're referring to, agent."

In an exceptionally uncharacteristic show off frustration, Natasha threw her arms across the desk, pushing files, pieces of tech, and weapons to the floor. Clint felt the shadow a flinch roll across Hill, and he frowned, stepping further away from the scene and pulling her with him.

Fury seemed to sigh, and finally met Natasha's gaze.

"You know _exactly_ what I'm talking about." Fury didn't blink. "Tell me why he was brought here. WHY wasn't I informed?"

Fury pushed away from his desk and stood. He strode over to the wide windows that surrounded his office and gazed out of them, hands folded behind his back.

"As you know, Captain Rogers has been investigating the death of Dr. Arnim Zola, a pioneer in the field of genetic engineering and a founding member of HYDRA. Before he went under, the Cap had several encounters with Zola while he was trying to take down the Red Skull. It was believed that Zola had been killed, but it was recently discovered that he had created a machine, of sorts, that has been housing his conscious mind for the last 70 years."

Clint had been listening intently, trying to piece together what this had to do with Natasha and the metal armed man. Hill stood next to him, frowning in disapproval, while Natasha kept her icy gaze on the director. He turned now, and gazed at her. If Clint tried, he could almost see a shred of sympathy in the Director's stance.

"We managed to uncover quite a bit about what the good doctor had been up to since the end of the war. As it turns out, he fled to Russia, where he was engaged by the Red Room."

Clint froze; his head whipped around to stare at Natasha, but she still hadn't moved. She had remained unsurprised by everything the Director had divulged so far. Clint knew very little about Natasha's time with the Red Room, but about the organisation itself – his skin was already crawling. Was this all somehow related to the prisoner they had encountered?

It seemed Natasha had had enough beating around the bush. Her fists clenched by her side as she grit her teeth.

"Why. Is. He. _Here_?"

The Director sighed finally, and went back to his desk where he began sorting through the mess Natasha has created, seeming to be looking for a particular file.

"I've neglected to tell you what prompted Captain Rogers to begin investigating Zola. You may not have known this, but Steve's best friend was killed during the confrontation with the Red Skull. Sergeant James Barnes, or Bucky as Steve calls him, fell from a moving train into a frozen crevasse. Zola was on that train; he saw the whole thing. He and the Red Skull had captured Barnes and the rest of the Captains team previously, torturing them and using them to hurt Cap.

Zola convinced Red Skull to retrieve Barnes' body from the bottom of the mountain to use in his experiments. What they didn't expect was that the fall hadn't killed Barnes. When they found him, he was half dead and beginning to go mad. The hyperthermia was taking him, and his left arm had completely succumbed to frostbite.

Zola took him back to his laboratory and begun to work on him, using him as a dummy that he could experiment on. Who knows what his original goal had been – the Red Skull was defeated and the Red Skull and Barnes disappeared.

In the meantime, the Red Room began to flourish. After Germany's defeat, Russia became even more invested in the program. They created human weapons and enlisted trainers with little to no humanity to look after their girls. As I said, we've now discovered Zola played a major role in the genetic engineering of the program used, as well as developing several of the brainwashing and memory wiping techniques we have seen.

15 years later, we began to hear about 'The Winter Soldier', a lethal assassin who no one could find, no one could track, and who seemingly came out of nowhere. It was almost the end of the Cold War before anyone even made the association between the Winter Soldier and the Red Room. In hindsight, we should have connected the two sooner. A Soviet super-soldier who doesn't age or have any kind of personality? What can I say; if we'd had what he had now back then, maybe we would have put two and two together.

It didn't seem to matter anyway, we couldn't catch him. He didn't make himself known to anyone, dropped off the face of the earth until another high profile target made themselves know.

It just so happened his next target would be Captain America. The two came face to face last year – you probably remember the Captain disappearing for a few months. He took some personal time to hunt the Winter Soldier down. To try and find his best friend."

The room was silent as the Fury finished his tale. Clint's brow was furrowed; he was pretty sure he knew what the Director was saying, but he just couldn't quite wrap his head around it.

He looked from Fury, to Nat, to Hill, and back again and determined he was the only person in the room who was on a different page.

"Ok…" he began, "Let me get this straight: You're saying that Steve's best friend from more than 70 years ago was taken by the Red Room and turned into the Winter Soldier, who I'm assuming is Metal-Man we met out there, and he's been going around killing people for literally decades, and now you've just caught him? Can I just say, HUH?"

"How did you find him?" Natasha asked Fury in a low voice.

"Let's just say Cap appealed to his humanity."

"The Winter Soldier is NOT a man! He is a monster – a machine! Any shred of humanity in him is long gone."

"Eight years ago we could have said the same about you." The Director was calm, but Clint felt the tension in the room expand to breaking point. Natasha's eyes widened in shock and she actually took a step back.

"You hid this from me on purpose." She accused. "That's what the bullshit mission in Bulgaria was about; why you were in such a rush to get us out of here. You didn't want me to know you were bringing him in."

"Well you can hardly blame me." Fury answered drily, gesturing to the contents of his desk scattered across the floor.

Clint cocked an eyebrow; what Nat was saying certainly made sense, but he still seemed to missing a crucial part of the story. Ok, they had both been trained by the Red Room. But that was it, right? This Barnes person was brought in and let loose decades before Natasha had even been born!

"You should have told me." Natasha wouldn't back down. "I deserved to know."

"This was the Captain's call, Agent Romanoff. Barnes is here under his protection. That's the way it's going to be, like it or not. The decision has been made."

With that last word, Fury sat back down at his desk and turned to his monitor, signalling a somewhat abrupt end to the conversation.

Natasha leaned across the desk to him, pressing her palms into the mahogany and facing him eye to eye.

"You cannot order me to accept this. Not this. Not this time."

"No one is ordering you to stay, Romanoff."

She stood stiffly, as though she had been struck. She stared at the board behind the Director's head for a moment, before turning on her heel and practically running from the room.

Quickly, Clint reacted to stand in front of the door, blocking her path. She gazed past him, eyes steely, back rigid.

" _Move_ , Barton." And there was so much venom, and rage, and hurt in her voice that, against his better judgement, he did.


End file.
